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I recently accepted a position from Teach and Learn with Georgia, a Georgian Ministry of Education program designed to bring native speakers of English into classrooms around the country. I will be moving to Georgia in August of 2014 to begin my assignment.

Before this latest adventure, I studied at Bogazici University in Istanbul Turkey and at Azerbaijan University of Languages. I speak English German Spanish, Turkish Azerbaijani and Uzbek and am currently trying my hand at Georgian.

Monday, February 18, 2013

A week in Istanbul

I think I've done it again. I am going to be madly on top of blogging and
keeping all my friends and family up to date on the goings on in this wonderful
city of Istanbul. And then I forget. But I'm back now, so here come the
updates.

First update: classes. I had my first day of classes at Bogazici University
today. Or I was supposed to. I showed up nice and early to my Contemporary
Issues in Anthropology class today. I was so ready, with my pen and my notebook
and my planner. Note-taking and introductions here I come. And then I waited.
And waited. After 20 minutes myself and everyone else in the room who I was
chatting with had decided that this thing was definitely not happening so we
left. So overall, pretty intense. Tomorrow I have chemistry though, which I
suspect will mean business. Especially since it's a grad course. I therefore am
going to appreciate my gentle reentry into the academic world. Even if it did
not consist of anything. My schedule has also been finalized, approved and
gotten a great big star put on it, so I think I am good to go there. I will be
taking the aforementioned contemporary issues course on Monday, Regional
Studies on Thursday, physical chemistry on Tuesday and Thursday and advanced
reading in Turkish (for foreigners) on Tuesday and Wednesday. So yes, I have
Fridays free. Also Monday mornings. And Wednesday afternoons. So my life will
be an arduous once during my sojourn here, as is no doubt apparent. However, I
have every intention of finding things with which to fill the great chasms of
free time that currently seem to exist in my schedule. Like say, actually
updating this blog.

Now, in terms of what I have been up to since my last post. Looking back, I
had gone through the torture of registration and was preparing for a lovely
little walk along the Bosphorus. The walk turned out to be exactly that,
lovely, as well as breathtaking, windy, a little cold but also filled with
excellent company. I wandered with some friends down back streets and alleys on
the way there, with the general view that as long as we kept heading down, all
would be well. And it was. We walked along the water and then decided to
explore Rumeli Hisarı which is a
castle built by the Ottomans during the seige of Costantinople. It still
has some of the best views in town. We perused, snapped some picks and tried
very hard not to fall of the edges of staircases that are not guarded by anything
since apparently litigation it not a pressing concern to the Turkish Cultural Council.
Tuesday I waited impatiently for consent requests and in the end went into
Sultanahmet, the historic heart of the city for the day. I went with Hannah and
Elaina, both of whom have never been to Istanbul before. I felt a bit like a
tour guide as I took them from the Haghia Sophia to the Blue Mosque and the
Basilica Cisterns, all the while providing anecdotes that I picked up from tour
books and the for-hire guides outside that I occasionally unscrupulously follow
and listen in on. The Haghia Sophia is undergoing restoration work (what else
is new) but the workmen were happily hammering away, ruining the tranquil
atmosphere that the place seems to exude otherwise. It was also at the Haghia
Sophia that we got our museum cards, a 15 TL (Turkish Lira, or about $8.50) privilege
given to Turkish citizens that allows them into pretty much all the museums in
the country for free or a steeply discounted rate, as often as they want for a
year. Naturally I wanted to get in on this and so I presented my form
identifying me as a student at a Turkish university. After approximately every
single person who worked at the 3 ticket booths had looked at the thing a young
man walked over and said “No problem”. I was in. Oh Turkish museums, we will
become great friends, of that I can promise you.

At the Blue Mosque we decorously covered ourselves (not all the tourists
did, which I thought incredibly rude) and looked around, but again our
atmosphere was tainted, this time by an imam giving a lecture about Islam in
English to everyone at the mosque. I wouldn’t have minded Turkish, that would
fit the place, but someone the English seemed so foreign, so strange, that it
put me off and made me want to curl up or put in earplugs or similar. I wanted
to marvel, not get schooled. But I appreciate being allowed in so I must not
complain. Sunday we went to Topkapı
Palace, which is in the same neighborhood, right behind the Haghia
Sophia, where they have recently reconfigured their armor display. The
reenactor inside of me was about the shout for joy, but I managed to keep
myself in check as a perused the various types of blinged-out weaponry available
to the Sultan for smiting his enemy. He was not at a loss for choices, I can
tell you that. The adventure on Saturday was a walk from the dorm to Ortaköy and then on to Beşiktaş and across the
Bosphorus to Kadıköy on the Asian side. The walk took us in total about an
hour and a half and it was freezing cold. We got off the ferry and I started to
wonder what on earth we were going to do on the Asian side to prevent
hypothermia. Luckily, I remember that the Asian side of Istanbul is a shoppers
paradise. The first stop was, naturally, a book store. I managed to keep myself
from buying the entire place up, even though they had some amazing sales,
starting at 1 TL books and 2 TL posters. I ended up deciding on a volume of
Sherlock Holmes short stories in Turkish. I’ve already started the Scandal in
Bohemia. I’m glad I’ve read them before and I still don’t know all of the
words, but I am getting more than I suspected and I know that they longer I’m
here, the better I will understand. That and I keep seeing words that I
recognize from class, or from Azerbaijan this summer and it makes me happy. We
then perused the various clothing options and came to the conclusion that
during this semester we will all be completely replacing our wardrobes. I
started with my shoes. I bought a lovely pair of absolutely-positively-sure-to-be-authentic
Converse for about $10 and have been wearing them since. It was also a great
chance to figure out which European sizes we wear. The European numbering of everything
has been throwing me off, especially the fact that the ground floor is below
the first floor and so I consistently think that I am done with stairs only to
realize that my dorm on the fourth floor is one more up. The walk is good for
me anyways.

The gang with the view from Topkapı Photo Credit: Random Turkish guy I asked to take the picture

I graduated from Michigan State University in 2014 with degrees in chemistry, anthropology and Turkic languages. When not out globetrotting, I can be found perched in front of my laptop, sharing my adventures with you.